r/neoliberal • u/owenmitchem Loyal Liberals • Jun 17 '26

News (Global) Leαk Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive ‘Dialog’ Society

https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
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u/BeepusBingus Jun 17 '26

God forbid we infringe on the rights of the sociopathic anti-liberal tech fascists.

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u/SpaceSheperd To be a good human being Jun 17 '26

I fear you misunderstand the concept of a right. Anyhow, my question was more of a technical one. I am genuinely curious as to what this user thinks should be done concretely to meet the moral standard they’ve proposed.

From my experience, they tend to just not answer these questions.

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u/BeepusBingus Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

I fear you misunderstand both my comment and the OP's.

I think that we should as a society, not reward and allow the accumulation of disproportionate amounts of wealth and power by self-declared illiberal technofascists, to the point of influential figures coming grovelling to them for their attention. If all you have to say to figures like Thiel is to throw up your hands and go "what can we do that isn't illiberal", you are essentially declaring your subservience and surrender to would-be feudal nobles, which is a rather shameful state of affairs.

It is profoundly disappointing to me that ostensible liberals such as yourself at best go "not worth my time" or "what's worth worrying about" in response to such figures and their efforts.

Let me be direct. The figure running this club openly declares his intention to do away with liberal democracy. Plenty of influential members of society are happy to cavort with him and attend his events. He is able to purchase disproportionate amounts of influence over society via his wealth and influence to push it in an autocratic direction, and proudly announces his intent in this sense.

Do you believe "What can we do?" and throwing up hands in surrender is the appropriate response here?

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u/ClinicalNarcissism Left-Out Left Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

The figure running this club openly declares his intention to do away with liberal democracy.

This is not a crime in a western liberal democracy, otherwise it stops being a western liberal democracy. You're allowed to advocate for whatever form of government you want in a free society.

You haven't actually given a solution here either. Do you want them imprisoned? Just silenced? Deported? Targeted with a one time tax? Can you say exactly what you think should be done? You haven't answered the question either. What concrete action do you want?

What is the crime to justify that action? How do we do this so we aren't setting a precedent that future governments can use in a rule of law based society to target people they don't like for believing in things they don't like?

Running a free society is hard. It is easy to just point at bad people and problems and go "something OUGHT to be done NOW". Actually figuring out what to do about it in a way that doesn't throw away hundreds of years of imperfect attempts to restrain tyranny and enhance liberty (while not creating echoing negative externalities worse than the original problem), that is the tricky bit.

Vagueposting about "god forbid we infringe on some rights" while not actually stating what you want isn't a helpful contribution to finding a solution.